Enjoy this reading of the poem Kitiara, of All the Days by Michael Williams. This poem first appeared in Leaves from the Inn of the Last Home, released in 1987. Buy Leaves from the Inn of the Last Home: https://amzn.to/39TClwb
Kitiara, of All the Days
Kitiara, of all the days these days
are rocked in dark and waiting, in regret.
The clouds obscure the city as I write this,
delaying thought and sunlight, as the streets
hang between day and darkness. I have waited
past all decision, past the heart in shadows
to tell you this.
In absences you grew
more beautiful, more poisonous, you were
an attar of orchids in the swimming night,
where passion, like a shark drawn down a bloodstream,
murders four senses, only taste preserving,
buckling into itself, finding the blood its own,
a small wound first, but as the shark unravels
the belly tatters in the long throat’s tunnel.
And knowing this, the night still seems a richness,
a gauntlet of desires ending in peace,
I would still be part of these allurements,
and to my arms I would take in the darkness,
blessed and renamed by pleasure;
but the light,
the light, my Kitiara, when the sun
spangles the rain-gorged sidewalks, and the oil
from doused lamps rises in the sunstruck water,
splintering the light to rainbows! I arise,
and though the storm resettles on the city,
I think of Sturm, Laurana, and the others,
but Sturm the foremost, who can see the sun
straight through the fog and cloudrack. How could I
abandon these?
And so into the shadow,
and not your shadow but the eager grayness
expecting light, I ride the storm away.
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